“Geier recalls how Laura Christine, vice president of direct marketing and e-commerce at shoemaker Skechers USA, told attendees at the Internet Retailer 2009 conference in June that she put 94% of the company’s entire online budget into retargeting. Christine reduced Skechers’ partnerships to seven ad networks from 20. While Geier couldn’t recall her exact return on investment, he says the ROI exceeded 200% on more than $2 million in revenue.”

Maybe online is more than making up what it lacks in creative with better targeting. Maybe it’s working its magic in conjunction with TV, by letting brands with smaller budgets afford continuity, or by acting as a “reminder” of a TV ad. Maybe online is working on its own, by adding leverage to a “weak force” and making it stronger. But this much is clear: Online advertising will work even better if there is an interactive creative revolution.

Over the last 15 months, I have been analyzing both Twitter (feeds and search), and the Google “real-time” Search Options feature for Web Search (many months before release, a Search Options search box could be configured by modifying the URL with its date-based variable). During this time, I have come to the following three conclusions about the prospects of real-time social search engines: 1) The reality of the robust real-time search concept is much closer than we think; 2) real-time search results have a number of common uses, and are highly preferable over “anytime” search for a wide variety of search tasks; 3) the best way for real-time social search to come to full fruition is for Google to acquire Twitter, and add a social network layer to its crawler-based real-time results.

I got an impenetrable pitch from Meebo Monday about some new features in the company’s “Community IM” program that we covered in October. The note said, “Content sites interested in increasing the volume of content sharing, but without their own social graph, can use the multi-network IM feature to expand their reach and drive social interactions.”

Following up — because I do love a puzzle and I remain curious about Meebo’s business — I learned that Meebo is expanding its chat product that sites like CafeMom are using with a few features that link those users into the broader Meebo network and into new Meebo features. And also that Meebo’s making money, which I never expected.

As the newspaper industry and its classified advertising business wither, one company appears to be doing extraordinarily well: Craigslist The Internet classified ads company, which promotes its “relatively noncommercial nature” and “service mission” on its site, is projected to bring in more than $100 million in revenue this year, according to a new study from Classified Intelligence Report, a publication of AIM Group, a media and Web consultant firm in Orlando, Fla.

Developers of programs for the iPhone have already managed to make a decent living selling hundreds of thousands of copies of games from their living rooms or garages.

But now, a new way to profit from writing software for the iPhone is emerging: Sell the apps, then sell your company.

With the number of downloads through Apple’s App Store topping one billion and more than 40 million iPhones and iPod Touches sold since 2007, an increasing number of companies are seeing the mobile industry as a source of sustained revenue. Recently, IAC/InterActiveCorp, the Internet media conglomerate founded by Barry Diller, and Amazon.com, have bought app developers. Smaller companies have begun to assemble properties.

If Microsoft has its way and gets its money’s worth from a $100 million campaign, Bing will be everywhere. Following the launch of the company’s new search engine, a campaign is underway that has Bing prominently placed inside TV shows and Hulu, The New York Times reports.

“It’s a very tall marketing challenge and a very tall product challenge,” Yusuf Mehdi, SVP of Microsoft’s online services division, told the Times. “It’s going to take multiple steps to get where we want to go, and this is the first step.”

On Monday, Hulu will run a telethon-style commercial called a “Bing-a-thon,” beginning at 8 p.m. (Eastern Time). Los Angeles-based Creative Artists Agency developed the program, according to the Times.

Online ad spending fell 5% to $5.5 billion during the first quarter of 2009, marking the first year-over-year decline for any quarter since 2002, according to new data released Friday by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers.That total also reflects a drop of about 10% from the $6.1 billion spent in the fourth quarter, when ad dollars tend to rise in connection with the holiday shopping season. Many industry forecasts have predicted single-digit growth for online ad spending in 2009, but if the current pattern continues, those projections may soon begin to look overly optimistic.

Trying to cast the ad decline in the best possible light, the IAB stressed that the Internet has not been as severely affected as other media in one of the worst ad marketplaces in decades. “Current economic conditions are clearly challenging,” said David Silverman, a PwC assurance partner, in a statement. “Nonetheless, interactive media continues to consume a larger piece of the overall advertising pie.”

Grady Burnett, head of Google’s AdWords division, is leaving the company for Facebook, Ad Age sibling Crain’s Detroit Business reported today. He is the fourth top ad exec to leave the search giant in recent months.

Just this week Google’s head of advertising-agency relations, Erin Clift, left Google for AOL, joining former Google exec Jeff Levick, AOL’s global head of ad strategy, and, of course, Tim Armstrong, the former head of North America for Google, who is now CEO of AOL.